Engines

As Piper rides a wave of trainer aircraft demand, it announced at Aero in Friedrichshafen, Germany, that it will offer a diesel version of its PA-44 Seminole. The new model will be powered by a new Jet-A engine model from Continental Motors, the 170-HP CD-170, a variant of Continental’s CD-100 series diesel engines. The Seminole […]

As important as batteries are, the brushless DC motors that power electric airplanes are just as critical. In this brief AVweb video, Siemen’s Frank Anton explains how they work. view on YouTube

Siemens brought its prototype electric aircraft to the U.S. this week for the first time, showcasing the airplane at the company’s Innovation Day in Chicago. “Electric propulsion is one of the transformative technologies that will help the industry meet the goals of reduced fuel, emissions and noise,” said Teri Hamlin, vice president of electric propulsion […]

Zipping across the North Pole to connect city pairs in the eastern and western hemispheres happens multiple times a day. But now Norwegian Air Argentina has applied for traffic rights from Buenos Aires to Perth, Western Australia, a 7,839-mile jaunt that will take commercial airline travelers directly over the South Pole. The South American arm […]

Aircraft engines are normally designated by obscure numbers only an engineer could love but as a clear expression of market intent, GE is giving its new turboprop engine a name: the GE Catalyst Advanced Turboprop engine. (Heretofore, it was simply the ATP engine.) GE announced the new engine in 2015 and last fall, it reported […]

When AVweb visited the Cirrus factory last summer, it was in the process of reorganizing to ramp up production of the new Cirrus SF50 VisionJet. In this detailed video, AVweb’s Paul Bertorelli reports on how the factory builds its popular piston and jet aircraft. view on YouTube

With the new ATP engine still in development, GE continues to market its line of H80 turboprop engines meant to compete with Pratt & Whitney’s PT6. GE’s Matt Garas gave AVweb a tour of the new engines at the NBAA show in Last Vegas in 2015. view on YouTube

Rotax is about ready to roll out its new 915 iS engine and it will soon be available in uncertified form as a powerplant choice for experimental amateur built aircraft and high-performance LSAs. At 141 HP max for five minutes and 135 HP continuous, the Rotax 915 iS occupies a unique niche for factory-provided engines. […]

GE Aviation announced Thursday it had successfully test run its partially 3-D printed Advanced Turboprop engine, which is set to power the Textron Denali single turboprop. Details of the test were scant in the GE press release but “early indications show that we will meet or exceed all the performance numbers we have quoted for […]

A piece of aviation history roared to life for the first time in a decade last week in an important milestone toward first flight. Crews at Basler Turbo Conversions in Oshkosh started the No. 1 engine in That’s All Brother, the C-47 that led 800 other aircraft in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. The […]